


A Tale of Took Family History

by Gammarad



Category: The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Culture, Elves, Family, Gen, Hobbits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2020-12-16 13:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21037067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: One Took's version of the origin of their family.





	A Tale of Took Family History

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Plaid_Slytherin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Plaid_Slytherin/gifts).

_As told by the grandson of Barkney Took and May Potts, great-grandson of Widow Potts, to his children_

Great-gran tells the tale of when the elves brought her my grand-dad. She says they were five of them, one a lady elf, fine and pretty with hair the color of tree bark curling down to her ankles when she let it down, not that she let it down outside her room, she wore it all in a gather, Great-gran says.

The men elves were also long-haired, all but one whose hair was short and stuck straight up like it was on fire, Great-gran says. Two dark-haired and one fair, and the one with fire hair was the color of fire too. 

They came at night and the Shire was all agog.

Who will take a young Hobbit who was took from his home and has need of his own kind to raise him right, the fair-haired elf said. He was the loudest of them, Great-gran says, though the shorter of the dark-haired ones was the wisest. Great-gran thought the short one was the eldest, too.

The wise elf looked at the crowd of hobbits and pointed at Great-gran, who was younger then, though still not very young. She was already a widow for a year and had no children.

But even though she had no child of her own, all the children of the town loved her. She was a second mother to every youngster in the Shire, near enough. She had enough motherliness to take care of far more than just one little boy. But sure enough, that one little boy could use a lot of mothering.

This is the lady to take this young man in, the wise elf told them all. 

I will adopt him and he will be, what is his name? Great-gran asked.

Barkney, the boy said.

You will be Barkney Potts, then, Great-gran said, and her dead husband's live sister shrieked. 

No, shouted Great-Aunt Thistle, you won't be leaving my brother's farm to random riffraff! Not a Potts! I'm a Potts and I say he never will be.

He was took, said Great-gran with admirable restraint, so he can be Barkney Took. I'll raise him like my own, but he'll find his own fortune and not inherit. Satisfy you, Thistle?

The elves all stayed with Great-gran for three weeks while Barkney got acquainted with his new home. They said it would be easier on him. 

Great-gran says the elves just liked the Shire and wanted to stay. They had a grand time, she says, singing late at night, with admiring young hobbits gathered around saying how beautiful the music was and offering them their best cooking. She says the elves appreciated being fed right for once in their lives. All of them too thin, she says.

And then just as they left, the ghost of her dead husband visited her and left her a parting gift. Not a year later, her only child, a daughter, was born. That's my Gran, May Potts.

Great-aunt Thistle was like to boil her ears at the news. She didn't believe it for a moment, said May must be some girl too young's shame, handed off to everyone's second mother. 

Everyone else, though, remembered the tale of the visit of the ghost of Wolder Potts. Little Barkney Took had seen him, so had the fire-headed elf and the elf lady too, and Merva Baggins had caught a glimpse, and old Allosticon Turvey, who saw all the ghosts that ever came to the Shire. So Thistle was shouted down and May was all set to inherit her father's farm when her mother passed.

May was a strange one, they said. I mean she still is, my Gran, a bit odd, but what old Hobbit lady isn't? She's tall and thin, a head higher than Grand-dad but half his weight. Didn't stop her from bearing five healthy children, my uncles and aunt and Pa. Didn't stop her from learning to cook just as good as the other hobbit ladies neither. 

I don't see the trouble just because she sings songs that the elves taught Grand-dad and Great-gran, better than they do? She has a good singing voice, is it so strange? She grew up with those songs, and the elves came and visited a few times later, one of them, anyway. The short dark wise one. He got along good with Great-gran, it was. The two of them whispering away late at night even at his last visit, which was when I saw him with my own eyes. It's silly fancy if your friends name her a fairy. She's a hobbit like the rest of us, sure as anything.

So that's how the Took family came to the Shire, you see? Now off with you to bed, youngster.


End file.
